Migration to UE4.14 | Colonial Stations | Ship Colors | Enhancements

It's been a while since you’ve heard from us, but we’re breaking
the radio silence now. We recharged our batteries over the holidays and we’re
ready to tackle the last remaining challenges that lie ahead of us before the
full release. Because we had a couple of moving targets on the technical side
of things, it was hard for us to announce anything concrete earlier this year.

However, a major task has been completed: we migrated
the whole project to Unreal Engine 4.14, which enables us to simultaneously release
all upcoming patches and the full version across all current platforms. We’re
still waiting for NVidia/Epic to fix the major graphical glitch under Linux,
but we will keep you posted on that.

Releasing simultaneously on Steam, GOG, Xbox, and the
Windows Store is quite a task, particularly for a small team like us. Plus, we
got several parties involved at the same time which makes communication even
more challenging. We ask for your
understanding if we area little less responsive than usual during our last few
Milestones.

With all of that being said, we would now like to give
you a sneak peek of what you can look forward to in our next major update,
which is not that far away.

Derelict Colonial station wrecks: You will be able to
explore the large wrecks of Colonial stations. Some security mechanisms like
turrets, laser barriers, sentry drones, and secure doors are still intact. There
may also be dangerous plasma discharges that will harm your ship and push it
away. As you might have expected, there is a new type of precious loot hidden
inside these wrecks...

Enhancements: Enhancements can be found in Colonial
station wrecks, and work like runes that can be equipped before a run. Some
give small bonuses to various ship stats, while others can change the playing
style completely and have both positive and
negative effects, e.g. “All enemies and loot are visible on the radar, but
alien forces and warships arrive twice as early.”

Ship Colors: Ship colors can be collected just like
blueprints by shooting down powerful enemies. Colors can be applied to any ship
in the hangar, and you can change the look of the ship’s body and markings. The
more colors collected, the more variations possible.

Are you up for some ship customization? How about a body paint job for starters?

Alternative loadouts: Can be unlocked for each ship by reaching new sectors. There are two additional loadouts for each ship to unlock, changing the starting equipment drastically and thus allowing new playing styles, especially in the beginning of a run.

Gunship balancing: The Front Shield Generator is now available and even exclusive for the Gunship. Furthermore, its armor and energy core recharge rate was increased and a new device
slot was added.

We made the big boy beefier and even more deadly!

Of course, there is much more coming with this update
but we'd like to keep some surprises for you.

We got some good news: Update v0.4 has passed Cert! We are now prepping the roll out on Steam, GOG.com, Xbox and the Windows Store for later this week. Thanks for your patience!
@ Joseph J Lazar: Just hired a new dev who focuses on VR! Chances are low that we will have full VR support in v1.0 but at least we should have a much better experience than now.
@ Darcy: Further platforms are definitely not ruled out and we look forward to announce more when the time is right.
@ Toni Breitsprecher : v1.0 is still scheduled for mid Q2; Early Access was a month sooner than originally estimated during our Kickstarter; I guess we are pretty much on track.
@ Jair G Schroeder : some colors will be available right from the start, others will come as blueprints so you won’t lose them after you have died.
@ Chris Frye : The issue has been acknowledged by Epic and is with Nvidia for further investigation.
/Michael